Singapore Government Press Release

___________________________________________________________

Let me first say how great a pleasure it is for my wife and me to join you at this Inaugural Dinner of the NUS Physics Alumni. It is indeed wonderful to meet old friends and many others who share our common interest in this fascinating subject, Physics. It is a special honour for us to welcome to our dinner tonight, Professor and Mrs Friedman from MIT. Professor Friedman is in Singapore as a Lee Kuan Yew Distinguished Visitor and we are happy that he and his wife have found time in their schedule to attend our dinner.

The NUS Physics Department has a venerable history being founded sixty-eight years ago in 1929 as a department in the then Raffles College. Professor E Madgwick from Cambridge University was appointed the first Professor and staff member in the department. Indeed, Professor Madgwick was the only staff member in the department until 1931 when he was joined by Mr C G Webb as a Demonstrator. Up until the Second World War, the staff of the department never exceeded three persons who between them were responsible for providing a three-year Diploma course in Physics covering Mechanics, Light, Heat, Sound, Electricity and Magnetism and a one-year service course for pre-medical and pre-dental students.

Even as recently as the early 1960s when I studied Physics in the University of Singapore, the predecessor of the National University of Singapore, the Physics Department was a small one with 8 members of staff and only two Honours students, Mr Yeo Chee Hee and myself. With such a small number of students, teaching was rather informal. I remember the staff simply giving us a reading list, a roster of experiments, the keys to the Honours laboratories, and telling us to learn as much Physics as we can and to see them if we encountered any difficulties. Equipment was not as sophisticated as today and doing experimental work was very time consuming. For example, when we did an experiment on X-ray crystallography, we had to work day and night in the laboratory for several days, setting up the crystal, taking the X-ray photograph, developing it and then adjusting the Crystal to get the correct angle of reflection. With modern computer-controlled X-ray equipment, the same experiment could, no doubt, be done today in a couple of hours. However, the discipline of having to carry out difficult experiments using relatively unsophisticated equipment taught us valuable skills and fostered close co-operation between the students and staff. I well remember Professor Arthur Rajaratnam, who was then in-charge of the Honours Experimental Physics programme, dropping by the laboratory at 2/3 am in the morning to see how Chee Hee and I were getting on and bringing along coffee and sandwiches to cheer us up. Notwithstanding the rather unstructured mode of instruction, Chee Hee and I must have learnt a lot of Physics during our Honours year because both of us were awarded First Class Honours and went on to earn higher degrees in Physics.

Since those early days, the NUS Physics department has expanded rapidly to comprise today a department of 38 academic staff teaching over 200 Physics students (including 21 Honours students) and providing service courses for more than a thousand students in the other departments in NUS. The NUS Physics department today has a very active research programme with over 90 research students of whom 30 are studying for their PhD. Specialist laboratories in the Department include Nuclear Microscopy, Surface Science, Laser Physics, High Temperature Superconductivity and Electron Microscopy.

Graduates of the NUS Physics department have distinguished themselves in many fields in Singapore, not only in academia but also in politics, business and Government administration. With such a history, the establishment of the NUS Physics Alumni is a timely move to enable the graduates of the department to keep in touch with each other and with the activities of the department.

As part of the Government’s plan to develop Singapore into a regional centre of education, an International Academic Advisory Panel (IAAP) comprising senior academic officers met in Singapore in August this year to advise the Government on how to develop NUS and NTU into world-class centres of excellence in research and scholarship. I would like to take the opportunity this evening to describe briefly the key findings and recommendations of the Panel and the responses of NUS and NTU to the Panel’s recommendations.

The IAAP was generally impressed with the good facilities and the high standards of teaching in NUS and NTU. However, the Panel felt that our university students would benefit from some broadening in their education. They felt that exposure to different disciplines would enhance creativity and thinking skills in our undergraduates, and better prepare them for the challenges and jobs of the 21st Century. As one Panel member commented "University education should not only prepare students for the jobs of today but also for jobs which have yet to be invented and careers which do not presently exist."

The suggestions made by the Panel to broaden the outlook and training of the university students included :

a) some form of "guided broadening" which went beyond the present

system of electives; and

b) expansion of exchange programmes for Singapore students to

spend at least one semester abroad.

Both NUS and NTU shared the Panel’s views that a broadening of university education would benefit their graduates in the longer term. As a technological university producing professionals, NTU will initiate a more structured broadening programme to ensure that its graduates are exposed to disciplines beyond their field of specialisation. For the NTU engineering degree courses, NTU intends to accomplish this by incorporating non-technical subjects such as Economics, Business Law, Communication Skills and Regional Languages as part of the general electives. NTU believes that this approach will bring about a more balanced education while maintaining the proper focus of the professional requirements in NTU courses.

As a general university, NUS is taking a different approach to the issue of broadening the education of its undergraduate students. NUS intends to achieve this broadening through instituting a Core Curriculum initially for students in the Faculties of Arts and Science but which will eventually be part of the academic requirements for all students in the NUS. NUS feels that an inter-disciplinary and integrated study of core disciplines will complement and underpin the development of expertise and knowledge in the students’ respective specialist subjects. A sound grounding in the fundamental disciplines in the Arts and Science faculties is valuable training for our young people who aspire to different careers, including careers in the business world, as the value of a university education should not just be knowledge of content but the training of the mind - to analyse, reason and think in a logical way, and to communicate clearly and cogently. NUS plans to start off its Core Curriculum with subjects in three fields : Expository Writing, History of Singapore, and Management of Human Resources. At a later stage, NUS will work towards including three more fields : History, Culture or Society of our Region, Economic Analysis and Applications and Recent Developments in Science and Technology. There will be a number of courses within each field and students can choose the courses which interest them most so that the Core Curriculum will not be a burden but will attract and challenge our students and enrich their education.

Implementing the Core Curriculum will be a major effort for the NUS particularly for the staff in the Faculties of Arts and Science who will be responsible for drawing up the courses, writing the material and teaching the courses. To co-ordinate the work of the two Faculties, NUS will appoint Professor Shih Choon-Fong, Director of the Institute of Materials Research & Engineering, as a Deputy Vice Chancellor to work with the Deans of the Faculties of Arts and Science to develop the Core Curriculum. Advice on the Core Curriculum will be provided by two Professors : Professor Henry Rosovsky and Dr Phyllis Keller - who were responsible for the development of the Core Curriculum at Harvard. The development of the Core Curriculum at NUS is likely to take four to five years as new courses have to be developed and a structure laid down.

On research, the IAAP agreed that the reputation of a university rested heavily on its research excellence. A strong research reputation attracted good faculty and students which would in turn boost the standing of the university. The Panel was cautious about drawing rigid lines between research and teaching, and between undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. They felt that research and teaching went together and stimulated each other. Based on their experience, the members advised that standalone research institutes were unlikely to succeed in sustaining outstanding output. Close links with university academia and industry were essential to the long-run success of research institutes.

IAAP members shared their experiences of research funding in their own countries. Most countries used a combination of government (national and local levels) and private sector funding. One observation was that a non-mission oriented agency like the National Science Foundation in the US was more effective in supporting both engineering and basic science research, and the development of high quality research manpower. There was some sentiment in support of research ideas generated by principal investigators working alone or in small groups, instead of "thrusts" from above.

MOE has taken note of the Panel’s views and will liaise with NUS and NTU and the relevant Government Ministries and agencies to review the academic research funding allocation mechanism, in particular the appropriate balance between national "flagship" projects and principal investigator-driven research.

To meet the manpower needs of Singapore, the IAAP agreed that there should be an expansion in the number of undergraduate and graduate students.

In view of Singapore’s small population base, this could be done by recruiting more students not only from Singapore but also from the region and beyond.

The Panel noted that, as NUS and NTU are growing institutions, the recruitment of more foreign students will not disadvantage Singapore students as the two universities can easily accommodate the additional numbers. The establishment of a third university would also create more opportunities for university education for Singapore and foreign students and at the same time provide competition for NUS and NTU.

The Panel stressed the importance of recruiting world-class faculty in order to build a world-class university. Top faculty acted as a magnet for good students. A university with a strong reputation would in turn attract top faculty. The right candidates had to be identified and "courted". "Growing our own" was not necessarily a good strategy unless it was complemented by efforts to attract the very best from all over the world.

NUS and NTU will take a proactive approach to recruit quality students (at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels) and faculty members from Singapore and the region and beyond. In particular, NUS and NTU will step up efforts to recruit more foreign students at the undergraduate level to increase the percentage of foreign students at the undergraduate level from the present 10% to 20% of the universities’ annual undergraduate intake by the year 2000.

The NUS Physics department has progressed a great deal since its establishment some seventy years ago as a one-man department in 1929. The next 20 - 30 years will see a flowering of the department as it achieves new heights of excellence and becomes even more relevant and important to the development of NUS and to Singapore. I wish the NUS Physics department all success as its staff and students look forward to the exciting days that lie ahead.

-----------------------